Facebook alert

My friends -- and, I suppose, friends of friends, etc. -- have begun a chain letter-esque "15 books" list.

The point is to list 15 books that your mind wanders back to again and again. Not necessarily the best books you've ever read, or your favourite books of all time. Just the ones that immediately come to mind, that perhaps you talk about a lot, the ones that have nested so far in your head they are part of who you are.

Briefly, my friend TSS's list begins with these five:

No Country For Old Men
Palestine
The English Patient
What Is The What
Go Jump In The Pool

While my friend R's list starts:

The Sword of Shannara
The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay
The English Patient
Infinite Jest (Also, Consider the Lobster and A Supposedly Fun Thing I'll Never Do Again)
Granta 33: What Went Wrong?

And here is my complete list with -- bonus! -- explanations:

Persuasion
At the end of the day, I have to say Austen's last novel is my favourite. Yes, the plight of Anne Elliot -- she of disappeared bloom and waiting around for Capt. Wentworth -- can read a little slow. And Austen goes into overdrive to wrap it all up in happily ever after. But under all that, under the boy-meets-girl, away from the fairy tale, lies layers of character development and painful, cringe-worthy, gut-wrenching human interaction.

Cat's Eye
Speaking of gut-wrenching. Teen and pre-teen girl drama haunt a woman's whole life in this Atwood classic.

Message from Nam
Yes. This was written by Danielle Steele. This is where we judge me freely for liking a Danielle Steele novel. But my defense? I was about 12 when I read this. And when you're a 12-year-old girl who dreams of becoming a reporter, the story of a war correspondent in Vietnam is something like a super hero comic book.

Fighting for Canada
This Diane Francis book about Quebec's separation movement was probably the first piece of non-fiction I read without a teacher breathing down my neck. I was fascinated by all things related to the 1995 referendum for years -- including all the newspapers my dad sent me from Montreal, English and French -- and as far as I'm concerned this book pushed me in the direction of political reporting years down the road.

The Vagina Monologues
Cunt! That's right. I said it. Out loud. Kind of. Eve Ensler's collection is a must-read for empowered women everywhere.

Bitter Chocolate
I successfully gave up chocolate for a year thanks to this Carol Off investigation.

Late Nights on Air
How awesome is Elizabeth Hay? In this book, she actually captures Yellowknife and puts it on the page for everyone in the world to enjoy. Granted, I have only ever been in Yellowknife for about five days altogether. So maybe I'm not the best expert. But when I was there, I couldn't stop thinking about the world Hay created.

Gone With The Wind
"Fiddle dee-dee. Tomorrow is another day." Actually a thing I say, more than a decade after discovering an author can have enough guts not to give her hero and heroine a happy ending.

The Queen's Fool
Philippa Gregory + history of the United Kingdom + romance = Unforgettable.

Tom Jones
Fact: Henry Fielding is the only man to sneak onto this list. Also, his is one of the first English novels that looks like the kind of novel you'd read today. Tom Jones is the perfect haphazard, accidental lady's man. He's a 17th century hero, yes. But you know who else he might be? Rob Lowe in St. Elmo's Fire. Bret in Flight of the Conchords. Matthew McConnaughey in everything.

Pride and Prejudice
Wanted: Mr. Darcy. Nuff said.

The Diary of Anne Frank
The ultimate proof, I think, that the mundane details are what pull you into a book. So, I was 10 years old, and here was this girl who talked about boys and crushes. And then, this girl I totally got was in the middle of a tragedy I could barely wrap my head around. To this day.

Anne of Green Gables
I learned about Tennyson -- my favourite author -- from this book. When Anne floats down the river in a boat? And nearly dies? Classic.

Rilla of Ingleside
This is L.M. Montgomery's ode to Canada, to pacifism, to Harlequin-esque romance.

Summer Sisters
Ok, this is weird. But every sex scene in this Judy Blume book -- for adults, obviously -- is super memorable. I know, it's weird. But it sticks with you. Read the book, and you'll find yourself thinking about how one might lay down towels in a hotel bathtub. Or best ways to do it in the front seat of a truck.

What I missed.... The Bell Jar. The Diviners. The Wars. The Piano Man's Daughter. (Ha! Two Timothy Findley books! I do like male authors!)

happy birthday, Anne

I learned lots of things from this weekend's Globe and Mail. Alberta is hurting the country, according to Jeffrey Simpson. By maintaining a fixer in Afghanistan for longer than six weeks -- rather, keeping up trust and contact for nearly two years -- you can interview 42 members of the Taliban to interesting effect (but what then happens to the fixer?). And, Anne of Green Gables is 100 years old.

It's this last fact I hold closest.

Let me backtrack for just a moment -- bear with me, and apologies for the personal trek down memory lane.

In my family we do not have aunts. And certainly, I do not have any "awnts," as the Maritimers might say. I have tsias (the Italians) and aunties (the French-Canadians and Swedes). And Aunty Pam is my favourite.

There are many reasons for this -- geographical proximity when I was very young, my inability to remember a time when Aunty Pam wasn't part of my life and giggling, and of course, presents. What can I say? Like every other kid, I was pretty fickle when it came to likes and dislikes, and a good present went a long way with me.

She was the first person to give me a diary. It looked like a denim jean pocket and had a lock on its side, even though there was no one in my house with any interest in reading my diary. Still, I hid the key. Its clean white pages invited all the worries of an eight-year-old girl, and on its very first page my aunt scrawled a note. I don't remember the note, but I do remember the handwriting. I used to try to copy that handwriting.

Aunty Pam also offered a second inspiration to my young dreams of one day becoming a writer. She gave me the first three books in the Anne of Green Gables set -- Anne of Green Gables, Anne of Avonlea, and Anne of the Island. My favourite was the first. My second favourite the third. Later, when I read the rest of the set, I had a serious soft spot for Rainbow Valley, and Rilla of Ingleside pulled up alongside the first favourites. (Anne's House of Dreams, though, bored me to tears.)

I wanted to be L.M. Montgomery. I wanted to be Anne. I wanted red hair, and to have my stories published in newspapers, and I wanted a posse of girl friends to boss around and make re-enact Tennyson poems. I wanted children to arbitrarily love me, and I wanted to be an adored teacher. I wanted to have silly adventures, although I had no interest in accidentally making my best friend drunk.

I know, I've talked about this before. The gift of these works, though, were they were my first ticket to CanLit. They bridged the gap between the Beverly Cleary and Judy Blume books I first read on my own, and all the books I would later read as an adult. They were stories of Canadiana, of a pastoral time before the time I knew. They made me imagine what fresh-fallen snow might look like if there were no cars, and what roads and highways might have looked like if Anne had had her way and farmers hadn't been allowed to hang advertisements on their fences.

For all these dreams and imaginings, I owe my aunty.

a late ode to Canada Day

In honour of our 140th birthday (ha ha! we secured Confederation before Germany or Italy!), I offer up my Top 10 picks for best Canadian books.... Recognizing, of course, that this is a rather sad, English-only list. But taking pride for a moment that it's also a rather woman-heavy list.

1. Anne of Green Gables. Long before I fell for Tennyson, we were kindly introduced by L.M. Montgomery. Was there a girl more imaginative than Anne Shirley? I wanted curly red hair. And freckles. Without any real understanding of what a gingham dress might be, I longed for one. I wanted a group of little girl friends who would join me in my story-writing and play-acting. I wanted a Gilbert Blythe of my very own....



2. Oryx and Crake, by Margaret Atwood. If Atwood's The Handmaid's Tale was a harrowing look at where humanity could go -- in its worst-case, women as little more than baby-producing cattle, way -- then Oryx and Crake is a worst-case tale of where science could go in a world poisoned by man. And woman. This is not a book of lyrical feminism but achingly dirty and ego-driven masculinity. A world where one needs lots and lots of sunblock. And hope. For something.



3. I just finished reading a story as told through the eyes of a very young girl. And while admirable, it was no A Complicated Kindness. Miriam Toews gently imbues her tale of a young woman living in a small Manitoba Mennonite community with angst and confusion and hope and hopelessness. For example: "Travis told me that when I was dying to get high was when I was the most together and brilliant. Well, I said, it's the dying part that makes me feel alive."



4. There are moments when Ann-Marie MacDonald's Fall on Your Knees feels like the worst kind of melodrama. They are tiny glimpses of moments buried amongst all the overwhelmingly excellent prose. Her The Way the Crow Flies, however, may be a little shorter on the poetic prose and a little longer on the excellent story-telling. Maybe it's because my mom grew up on an Air Force base, maybe it's because there's a hopefulness and news-worthiness to her tale of Madeleine McCarthy -- an eight-year-old girl accidentally drawn into the biggest news story of her time, whose ripe fear keeps her silent -- but I would have to say MacDonald's second major novel outshines her first.



5. Remember when Maclean's was really really good? And you always read the back page first? Fotheringham's Fictionary of Facts and Follie is an ode to that time, an ode to the days when you ran to the post box on Tuesdays, eagerly awaiting that week's periodical. And then you laughed and laughed.



6. If I was astounded by Atwood's ability to depict a man gone wild in Oryx and Crake, I was far more blown away by Richard B. Wright's tale of two sisters in Clara Callan. Was Clara a realistic, representative small-town Ontario woman of the 1930s? I still can't decide. She was daring in her silence, in her privacy, in her life choices.... More daring, really, than the sister who pursued adventure in the United States. Clara is a tragic anomaly, and Wright created her so perfectly.



7. Rilla of Ingleside is the somewhat melodramatic final tale of Anne of Green Gables. Rilla is Anne's youngest daughter, a girl so feckless and unimaginative she is completely unlike her mother. Instead of the bouncing chapter-to-chapter fun of L.M. Montgomery's first novel, Rilla's story speaks to the author's last wishes for peace and love in this world. I have long loved Rilla, even for her self-centredness. Her tale brings the whole story to a close -- a close that allows us to remember Anne forever as an adult, too, a mother who hurt and cried and laughed and loved....



8. Okay. This list is making me gross sentimental. Time for some harsh come-uppance. Cue Naomi Klein's No Logo. I don't think there's any Canadian between the ages of 20 and 30, who went to university or college at some point during that time, who doesn't remember when this book came out. When it kicked ass (depending on your opinion). When it made you feel guilty (again, depending on your opinion). When it made you want to make a change in your world. (Come on!)



9. No list of top Canadian books is complete with Timothy Findley. (I'm sure people would say the same about Mordecai Richler. I'm not one of them, but I respect the opinion.) I offer you the mystical, sepia-toned tale of The Piano Man's Daughter.



10. In The Strangest Dream, Merrily Weisbord tells tales of Canadian communism. Of sweatshops in Montreal and the Cold War. Of spies and treason and, yup, I'm going to say it again, hope. I have almost as many folded-over corners and drawn-in stars and arrows in this book as I do in More's Utopia. Perhaps that says more about me than the book.... "What now? What do we believe now after the death of what was at once the most noble dream and a soul-destroying nightmare? Is global capitalism all there is? What remains of the impulse for social justice? What, if anything, is the legacy of the strangest dream?"